Description: In an era when criticism has been "put on notice" by literary theory, Helen Vendler makes a defiantly unfashionable case for her stalwart aestheticism. Appraising both fellow critics and literary theorists, along with a wide range of contemporary and canonical poets, she shows the rich dividends that accrue when we treat literature as a fine art.
Brief description: Helen Vendler (1933-2024) was a leading poetry critic and the author of nineteen books on poets from William Shakespeare to Seamus Heaney. A winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, she contributed regularly to the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Book Review, London Review of Books, and the New Republic. She was the Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor at Harvard University.
Review Quotes: Vendler's is an ample book...and will give us enough to go on digesting and arguing about, approving and resisting, for a long time yet.--Charles Tomlinson "Times Literary Supplement"